#catholic #sspx #advent

• There are two comings of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the first at Christmas and the second at the Last Judgment.
• St. Paul speaks of the Last Judgment today when he says: “pass no judgment before the time, until the Lord comes, Who will both bring to light the things hidden in darkness and make manifest the counsels of hearts.”
• We know this is one of the characteristics of the Last Judgment: everything will be revealed.
• But this is also one of the characteristics of the First Coming of Our Lord: His first coming brought to light many things that were hidden before.
• Recall what the old man Simeon said in prophecy to Our Lady, in the very same chapter as today’s Gospel, when He says that Our Lord will be a light of revelation to the Gentiles.
• The first chapter of St. John’s Gospel, which we read at the end of every Mass, also speaks of Our Lord as the light in His first coming, saying that He is “the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world”.
• And in this time of Advent, the Church quotes for us this prophetical passage from Isaias: “The people that sat in darkness, hath seen great light: and to them that sat in the region of the shadow of death, light is sprung up” (Is. 9:2). St. Matthew tells us that this prophecy was fulfilled by the preaching of Our Lord.
• The light that Our Lord brought to the world with His first Coming is very great:
  • He showed us clearly what our purpose is, what we are made for.
  • He taught us the moral law in a much clearer way than the Old Testament did. Recall the Sermon on the Mount, which shines a new light on the Ten Commandments. By doing this, He gave us a much clearer idea of what is good and what is evil, what is sinful and what is not.
  • Our Lord showed us clearly the meaning of suffering and how the Cross is a valuable part of our life, if we bear it with humility and resignation.
  • Our Lord showed us clearly the way that we must live our lives, if we are to fulfill our God-given purpose.
  • Our Lord gave us the fullness of revelation, all of the supernatural truths that we need to know in order to unite ourselves with God.
• St. John says of Our Lord that “His life was the light of men”. His life and His teaching changed the course of the world simply because Our Lord brought a light into this world that it had never seen before and which can never be exceeded.
• But, as you know, the reaction to this light was very different on the part of those who received it in Our Lord’s lifetime.
• When you are in a dark room for some time and then you go outside, the light is too bright for your eyes. There are three things that you can do:
  • Go back inside and return to the darkness.
  • Close your eyes to the light and try to walk in a state of blindness.
  • Allow your eyes to hurt for a little while until they are able to adjust to the brightness.
• These represent the three types of reactions to Our Lord’s light both in His time and ours.

#catholic #sspx #sermon

• Doctors tell us that if we want our bodies to be healthy, we must exercise our bodies regularly. If our bodies are always at a state of rest, not moving, not straining, they will deteriorate over time.
• It is interesting to note that many exercises consist of pushing back against gravity. We have this force of gravity that is always being exercised upon us, which pulls us down. We find that, if we sometimes work against that force of gravity, if we strain our bodies against it, it is helpful for our bodies, rather than just letting gravity always pull us down.
• We can think about the exercises of pull ups, push ups, sit ups, and so on. There is a kettlebell exercise where you simply hold a weight above your head and walk with it.
• God has made our body in such a way that it needs periodic movement and strain in order for them to be in good health.
• Today, I want to speak to you about a spiritual exercise that is like the anti-gravity bodily exercises. It consists in pushing back against the weight of our fallen human nature that is always weighing down upon us.
• Our fallen nature works on our souls like the force of gravity works on our bodies. It is always pulling us down to earthly things. We can think of our souls as naturally being stooped over and always tending to look at ourselves, to want creature comforts, to be consumed with the things of this world.
• If we made a log of what we are always thinking about for one day, we might be surprised. We might find a lot of vanity, selfishness, and pride in our thoughts.
• Just as if we leave our bodies alone and do nothing with them, they fall apart, so too with our souls. If we let them live this way all the time, we will lose them. Our souls will be always consumed with the things of this earth and will end up falling into hell rather than rising up to Heaven.
• At the beginning of this season of Advent, we heard these words of Our Lord: “when these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand.”
• We have to be continually be lifting our souls up to heavenly things. This is the spiritual exercise I would like to talk about. It consists in lifting our souls up to God throughout the day.
• Sometimes, you will hear this referred to as the “practice of the presence of God”. In other places, you will hear it referred to as the practice of recollection.

#catholic #sspx #ourlady

• The Immaculate Conception of Our Lady was a unique privilege given to her alone by God. Of all of the people born into this world after the sin of Adam and Eve, only one was prevented from contracting Original Sin by the intervention of God.
• This is implied by Pope Pius IX when he defined the dogma in 1854: “We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God” (Ineffabilis Deus)
• At the beginning of the same document, the Pope says, “Above all creatures did God so love her that truly in her was the Father well pleased with singular delight. Therefore, far above all the angels and all the saints so wondrously did God endow her with the abundance of all heavenly gifts poured from the treasury of his divinity”.
• Our Lady saw fit to make it clear that the Immaculate Conception is her unique privilege in an extraordinary way just four years later, in her apparitions to St. Bernadette in 1858.
  • St. Bernadette was given the mission by the parish priest to ask the lady who was appearing to her to say what her name was. It was uncertain that Our Lady was appearing.
  • The Lady asked St. Bernadette to come for fifteen days in a row. St. Bernadette kept asking her name but the Lady never gave it, and the fifteen days ended on March 3.
  • But St. Bernadette would sometimes get a strong urge to go to the grotto and this urge came to her on March 25. When Our Lady appeared to her, Bernadette was still quite focused on her mission. She asked the lady three times if she would not mind saying who she was and what was her name. Each time, the lady just smiled. She asked a fourth time and finally the lady became serious, lifted her eyes to heaven, and said those incredible words, “Lourdes: I AM the Immaculate Conception.”
  • Bernadette was a simple girl who could not read and hardly knew her catechism, even though she was fourteen years old. She had no idea whatsoever what was meant by “Immaculate Conception”. Plus, her memory was bad so she just kept repeating the phrase to herself so she could faithfully tell it to the priest.
• If Our Lady chose to speak of herself in such an extraordinary way, it was to communicate to us an important fact about her immaculate conception: God gave the privilege only to her.